Seiichi Niikuni

[3] In 1952 he began his career as a poet in earnest by joining a circle that published the poetry magazine Hyōga (氷河, lit.

In the fifth issue of this magazine, he published his first poem called Urei wo Paipu ni Tsumete (うれいをパイプにつめて).

[4] In 1962, Niikuni would publish a magazine called Tama (球) with two other poets he met while contributing to Bungei Tōhoku.

[8] In 1964, Niikuni participated in the E. E. Cummings study group held in Yukinobu Kagiya's house, and met Yasuo Fujitomi while there.

[6] In 1966, Niikuni and Garnier published a collective poetry work together called Nichifutsu Shishū (日仏詩集) in France.

[10] Requests from abroad to display his works kept increasing, and Niikuni gradually started to set his sights on foreign exhibitions.

[15] As Japan was faced the loss in the second World War, old values were uprooted and Niikuni started to question the meaning of words and metaphors in poems.

[18] With this transition, Niikuni did not completely reject metaphors, but included metaphor-like modernism and on top of it pursued poetry's essence in analogies.

[19] Furthermore, as was already visible from his works at the time of Hyōga, Niikuni was particular about carnal expression such as using sexual kanji like 男女 (danjo, men and women) and 唇 (kuchibiru, lips).

[23] The works in Zero-on, especially those of calligraphic poetry, that were created out of spatially emphasized characters, are thought to be the influenced by the French poet Stéphane Mallarmé's Un coup de dés.

[27] When Pierre Garnier saw Zero-on, he was amazed at how similar works they strove for and produced although the languages they spoke differed so much.

Niikuni was noted abroad as an example of a writer that relied on ideographs (kanji), and requests to display his works kept coming in.

[11] Niikuni progressed to methods like graphic design and emphasizing communication after Zero-on,[29] but he would not budge from expressing through kanji characters.

[29] In ASA Niikuni presented his most notable works, such as Kawa mata wa Shū (川または州) and Ame (雨).

[32] Niikuni himself disliked the fact that these visual poems were regarded as being borderline art, and also denied that they were based on photography.